COMMENT: Hi, Neil. Thanks for the interesting reminder of Szasz's common-sense (yet still controversial) unravelling of the pretensions of biochemical psychiatry. I come at this subject from a unique perspective: that of a 67-year-old depressed man who has been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by drug prohibition. From this perspective, I have to disagree with the idea that "the simplest and easiest to administer intervention finds its way to the top." That might be so in a free world, but not in the age of the wholesale prohibition of psychoactive medicine.
The simplest intervention would be to let human beings take care of their own health, or in other words, to re-legalize Mother Nature. We need to learn to use Mother Nature's medicines as wisely as possible and stop saying "drugs kill" just as our ancestors said "fire bad." I am devoting the final years of my life to writing essays against drug prohibition from a med-dependent patient's point of view. I have to see a doctor 1/3 my age every three months of my life in order to get a refill on a prescription that is far harder to kick than heroin, all because drug prohibition gave a monopoly on mind and mood medicine to financially interested parties: the medical industry and pharmaceutical companies. I may live to 100 and I will still be a child thanks to America's insane ideas about drugs.
Szasz's writings on psychiatry may be controversial, but at least people are reading them. No one seems to be reading his "Ceremonial Chemistry" or "Our Right to Drugs," which remind us of the obvious interest of the medical field and psychiatry in demonizing substances that past societies have considered to be panaceas since the time of Galen. The WHO says that depression will be the leading cause of disability worldwide by 2030. If that is so, it will only be because of drug prohibition, as anyone knows who is up-to-date on pharmacology, ethnobotany, and psychological common sense. A wide variety of drugs exist that could have cheered me up in a trice, any time these last 45 years when I have been unnecessarily gloomy under my regimen of dependence-causing Big Pharma pills. Drug prohibition outlaws all drugs that inspire and elate (the kind that have inspired entire religions) and yet most healthcare professionals pretend that drug prohibition does not exist. The situation is beyond parody. Depressed Canadian Claire Brosseau is asking for her right to assisted suicide, and not one single commentator on that case will even mention drug prohibition. And so we see that the government might use drugs to kill Claire, but they won't let her use drugs that might make her wish to live.
Sorry to run on, but as I say, I have "skin in this game."
COMMENT: As I see it, Thomas Szasz is not responsible for the fact that the U.S. does not want to spend one cent on helping people, that it prefers to use the police to take care of social problems. We did not have some great policy that Szasz dismantled. We had the police dealing with a social problem that should have been dealt with by people who could really help the homeless and the mentally challenged.
America wants to treat drugs the same way: they want the police to take care of drug issues. The resulting drug prohibition has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state, by shunting me off onto Big Pharma meds that are harder to kick than heroin. I have to see a "doctor" 1/3rd my age every three months of my life to get an expensive and underperforming "med" -- when drugs exist that could cheer me up in a trice, some of which have inspired the creation of entire religions.
That's why I have launched a Szasz-inspired Substack to discuss drug prohibition from the point of view of a med-dependent adult who has been denied godsend medicines for a lifetime now. Szasz saw this problem too -- tho' few Americans even dare to be seen holding a copy of his books on that topic, including "Ceremonial Chemistry" and "Our Right to Drugs."
COMMENT: The WHO tells us that depression will be the greatest cause of debilitation worldwide as of 2030. If Thomas Szasz were alive today, he would point out that this is only because of drug prohibition, which outlaws all substances that inspire and elate. Just re-legalizing cocaine by itself would end depression for most people, as Sigmund Freud well knew -- but self-interested doctors chose to demonize the drug by studying it only for its downsides. And there are hundreds of other drugs -- phenethylamines, tryptamines, opium, laughing gas... that could be used by grownups to end their depression. But we have decided to say "drugs bad" for the exact same reasons as our prehistoric ancestors said "fire bad."
I have had to live with my own depression for 45 years now because of drug prohibition, which denied me the medicines that grew at my feet while shunting me off instead onto expensive and underperforming Big Pharma meds that turned out to be harder to kick than heroin. That's why I am carrying on the work of Thomas Szasz in my Substack, writing on behalf of the rights of med-dependent "patients" to take care of their own health without the "help" of psychiatrists and Big Pharma.
COMMENT: Excellent article. Regarding Szasz and deinstitutionalization: I think we have to look at the system that Szasz's emphasis on civil rights was serving to upend. It's not like we had a caring system in place with qualified employees trying to help street people: we had a system where we let the police take care of our social problems, which seems to be the go-to strategy for conservatives these days, a strategy that helps them hide social problems by arresting everyone who is negatively affected by them. Conservatives dislike Szasz because when you take away the police, it becomes apparent that America has a homeless problem and that it is unwilling to spend any money on solving that problem -- except when the money is going to police forces. This is the same MO that conservatives employ concerning drugs. Instead of re-legalizing Mother Nature's medicines, teaching safe use, and hiring qualified people to intervene advisedly to help people with drug-related issues, they advocate drug prohibition so that they can use the police to arrest their way out of the public relations nightmare caused by people dying in the street. And when calls for civil rights take the police away from such jobs, the conservatives are vexed because America's dirty laundry is now suddenly being washed in public. They dislike this outcome because it clearly demonstrates the downsides of drug prohibition and its failure to regulate and educate. This is when they flip the script and blame the deadly outcome of their own prohibition on drug legalization itself, thus giving them the excuse that they require (at least in the eyes of the gullible public) to go back to the one policy with which these conservatives are comfortable when it comes to dealing with social problems in the United States: arresting their way out of them.
No substance is bad in and of itself. Fentanyl has positive uses, at specific doses, for specific people, in specific situations. But the drug war votes substance up or down. That is hugely anti-scientific and it blocks human progress.
In the 19th century, poets got together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses" (as per author Richard Middleton). When we outlaw drugs, we outlaw free expression.
Imagine educational documentaries showing how folks manage to safely incorporate today's hated substances into their life and lifestyle.
Typical materialist protocol. Take all the "wonder" out of the drug and sell it as a one-size-fits all "reductionist" cure for anxiety. Notice that they refer to hallucinations and euphoria as "adverse effects." What next? Communion wine with the religion taken out of it?
Materialist scientists cannot triumph over addiction because their reductive focus blinds them to the obvious: namely, that drugs which cheer us up ACTUALLY DO cheer us up. Hence they keep looking for REAL cures while folks kill themselves for want of laughing gas and MDMA.
Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."
Drug prohibition began as a racist attempt to prevent so-called "miscegenation." The racist's fear was not that a white woman would use opium or marijuana or cocaine, but that she might actually fall in love with a Chinese, Hispanic or Black person respectively.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
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